


the darning of family

by green_piggy



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, References to Illness, Sewing, Siblings, aka i shit out headcanons for why innes has piss poor def in heroes, anyway., he is NOT that ripped i REFUSE to accept it, i love tana and innes's relationship so much!!!, incredible development, innes for once in his life talks about his emotions, so dang much!!, summer alt innes is not real he cannot hurt you, thank you ao3 for my niche tags, written for the kith & kin family zine!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24222907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_piggy/pseuds/green_piggy
Summary: Tana visits her brother in the healers' tent after he is injured, who has an unusual request to ask of her.
Relationships: Heanius | Innes & Turner | Tana
Comments: 5
Kudos: 20





	the darning of family

**Author's Note:**

> one of two fics i wrote for the [kith & kin zine!](https://twitter.com/HyphenZines/status/1261274352592486405) i had a blast working on it and with everyone else, and it's a free zine over 100 pages long! please consider checking out everyone's amazing work~
> 
> tana and innes's relationship is very dear to me lmao. i love them both a whole load and appreciate how they struggle with one another and frequently bump heads (admittedly, most of that is on innes, because he's a dick), but still love each other so very much. innes saying that tana is very important to him in heroes and asking her to please not make him imagine losing her (in french at least) HITS ME RIGHT _HERE_ FOLKS [i clutch my chest and roll onto my side while sobbing] innes in general is one of my fave characters, and has one of my favourite character introductions period, but i ain't gonna give him any more of an ego by talking about him. he does not need it
> 
> enough of that! hope you enjoy the fic~

With a heavy sigh, Tana strolled into the healers’ tent. Before she could even touch her brother’s curtain—

“Can I—”

_“No,”_ Tana interrupted, yanking the curtain open. From his bed, Innes scoffed, glaring at her before glancing away. Perhaps if he wasn’t sickly pale and had both his arm and leg wound tight in bandages, he would have looked intimidating. As it was, he was just a stark reminder of how easy it was to lose someone. Of how fragile people were.

Tana swallowed. The bedside stool creaked as she sat down.

“If you’ve come to lecture me again,” Innes spat, not looking at her. “...Then leave. I haven’t the patience for babble.”

_“Babble?”_ Tana blurted out. “Of course I’m lecturing you! You _know_ you’re not a close-range fighter!” Her fists wrinkled the ruined fabric of her dress. It was torn and hole-ridden, dirtied to the extent that it was near-impossible to see any of its original colour. Tana had neither the time nor the resources to wash it, much less patch it. Goodness, she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d sewed.

She knew she was only hyper-fixating on it to avoid her brother. Swallowing, Tana forced her head up. Innes’s gaze was ice-cold. He didn’t seem to notice, but his entire body trembled ever-so-slightly. L’Arachel had informed Tana that it was a common side-effect of using an excessive amount of healing magic. It wasn’t harmful.

It was still disconcerting to witness.

“Well?” Innes attempted to cross his arms. At the miniscule movement of his bandaged arm, he winced and let it fall onto his lap. He arched an eyebrow instead, as if he was standing tall and not barely able to sit. “That was quite the terrible lecture, if that’s all you had to say.”

“Of course it wasn’t!” She took a deep breath. Innes was just attempting to rile her up so that they could get off the subject of himself and his self-perceived shortcomings. As if nobody ever got hurt in war. “I just…”

Innes said nothing.

“You need to stop _doing_ that.” Tana’s words were lost to the silence. Her fingers tangled in her skirt again, eyes staring at her bitten fingernails. “Throwing yourself in front of anybody at the slightest hint of danger. You’re not…” She trailed off, her next words dying on her lips, but her brother’s eyes flared.

“I am _not_ physically weak,” Innes snarled. “If you _dare_ imply—”

“I cannot imply that which is already true!”

Tana winced after the words tore from her throat, leaving in their wake a deafening silence.

Innes’s face twisted into a scowl most sour. SIlence stretched taut. His head jerked away with a hiss, jaw jutting out from his gritted teeth. Tana swallowed down the heavy guilt in her throat, along with the nagging persistence that she was _right_ and they both knew it.

The truth was that Innes had always been - well, as much as he was loath to admit it - frail. He could shoot an arrow between a person’s eyes from a distance that most people couldn’t perceive them at all, but he’d never been able to pick up anything heavier than a wooden lance. Even a cold would have him bedbound for weeks. Nobody knew the exact cause, but shortly after his birth, a terrible disease had devastated Frelia. Innes, not even a year old, had almost died from it. Tana hadn’t been born yet, but their mother, pregnant at the time, had isolated herself to protect her unborn child. Their parents believed that it had had a severe impact on their son’s health growing up.

Unfortunately, Innes, being Innes, only took that as a sign to push himself twice as hard as usual, and his usual was attempting to dig himself an early grave. When they were younger, Tana often had to tug away blades from his grasp before he overexerted himself. Once, on a summer vacation to a beach near Walles Forest, she’d caught him attempting to slice watermelons into perfect halves. _Watermelons!_ And when he hadn’t been chopping up poor fruit, he'd been nearly drowning in the ocean. He was a brilliant swimmer, but he didn’t know how to _stop._

Tana couldn’t imagine living like that. Yes, she worked hard and applied herself, but she knew when enough was _enough._ Her brother didn’t.

“Change your clothing.”

Tana’s head snapped up. “W-what?” Her voice came out as a wisp.

Innes tutted. “You have a change of clothing, do you not? Or at least borrow some from Marisa or Princess Eirika. Your current outfit is disgraceful. You will not represent Frelia in _that.”_

Tana bit her cheek before more angry words could gush out. She could hear, under her brother’s usual aloof tone, the waves of deep warmth, drifting amongst a sea of exhaustion. He was almost flat against the bed, the tatty pillow underneath his head the only thing even somewhat keeping him upright. Her heart softened.

“...Sure.” The stool squeaked as she stood. “But I’ll be back soon!”

The twist of her brother’s lips was too kind to be his usual smirk. “Bring your outfit back with you,” he rasped.

“See you in a few.”

When she closed the curtain behind her, a series of hacking, chest-heaving coughs bellowed from behind. Tana's stomach lurched.

_Stupid brother..._

Marisa had an outfit she gave to Tana with her usual (read: none) grace and charm. It was a sleeveless tunic similar to her dress, accompanied by plain beige trousers. Tana changed into them, then bundled up her outfit and toddled over back to her brother.

Innes looked even more washed out than before. His hair - which he usually took no small amount of pride in maintaining - sprayed out on the pillow in a sea of tangles and knots, his fringe clinging to his forehead with sweat. She'd brush that out for him later.

Of a more immediately pressing concern were his flushed cheeks. Panic pounded in her chest.

“Do you need a healer?”

As expected, Innes shook his head. “Magic cannot cure common illness,” he pointed out, voice not unkind. “But it is nothing to fret about.”

“Of course I’m gonna fret about it,” she mumbled. “You’re my brother.”

“Ah… well.” He glanced away, his cheeks colouring even further. “Leave the dress here and fetch a bucket of soapy water.”

“Huh..?” She blinked. “Are you… going to wash my dress? While you’re _bedbound?”_

“Tana,” he said plainly. “I am suffocating with boredom. I know I am…” He looked pained. “...not in an adequate state for strategising. But I need to do _something.”_

"But…"

Innes had the look of someone who would crawl out of bed and get the bucket himself. Tana patted his hand, grinning at his scowl, before she went out again.

After they washed the dress and dried it with a towel, Tana laid out both on her brother’s lap. She watched Innes fumble, struggling to push himself upright - if he needed help, she had to trust that he would ask.

Innes reached over to one of the pockets in his tunic, tugging it closer as he did. It had been draped over the bedside table; splattered on it was a large, dried patch of blood almost hidden by the pile of books and tomes. Tana calmed her queasy stomach and made a note to wash it later.

He pulled out some needle wrapped in thread. Of _course_ he had them. Why _wouldn’t_ Prince Innes, a brilliant strategician and archer, carry around sewing equipment?

_Only you, Brother,_ she thought with more than a little affection.

“You know how to sew?”

“Of course I do.” Innes’s face was aglow with pride. It was a refreshing change from his earlier sallow appearance. “We of noble birth should aspire to look as flawless as possible at all times. A royal must be able to maintain their own appearance without burdening the common folk."

Tana looked at his bandaged leg, then his bandaged arm, and scoffed.

“During war, though?”

“During moments like these, when there is naught else to do? _Yes.”_

“You only have one arm right now.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Innes said. The needle in his hand clattered against the bedding the very moment he attempted to pull the dress closer.

For several seconds, there was only silence. Tana just sat there, waiting with a fond smile as she watched the miniscule cracking of her brother’s composure.

“...I may require your assistance.”

“Of course!” she chirped. She brought her stool closer and followed his every instruction. Normally, she would have squabbled about that, but she didn’t have the heart for it today.

She couldn’t remember the last time things had been so… _amicable_ between her and Innes. It made her heart warm when she glanced over at him, watching him hard at work. his tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth. She simply held the dress, adjusting her grip when instructed.

"It is done," Innes eventually said. He fell back against the pillow with a heavy sigh, having clearly worn himself out with such a meager activity. Tana plucked the needle and thread from him - he didn’t complain when she leaned over him to put them back into the tunic’s pocket. She sat back down.

Innes pushed the dress towards her.

Slowly, Tana took it, throat dry. She stood up and held it out, tears pricking her eyes. There was not a single hole or rip to be seen in any part at all. Innes’s impeccable eyesight had paid off yet again.

It was _clean._ While not fresh, it certainly no longer stank of blood and death. Tana clenched her eyes shut and—

"...Tana?"

—opened them at her brother's reticent voice.

"...Yes?" she asked tentatively when he didn't speak.

She watched him visibly swallow, hands fisting into the quilt as he stared at his lap. "I…" Another swallow. "I am sorry," he muttered. "For underestimating your strength. I know you are stronger than I am, in many regards."

Tana's heart lurched. "Innes…"

"But—" And he looked at her now, his bag-heavy eyes narrow with determination— "I will not apologise for protecting you from harm. You…" His gaze faltered, eyes drifting to the ground. "...You are everything to me, Tana. I - I do not know what I would do without you. Truly."

"Brother…" Tana gingerly sat next to him on the bed's edge. She took his hand in her own. It dwarfed hers, but his skinny fingers, so thin that sallow skin stretched scant across bone, felt so fragile in her grasp. "You don't think I feel the same?" she hissed. "Gods, Innes, if - if anything happened to you, I…" Her grip tightened.

Innes stared at her with wide eyes, as if he’d never considered that. Tana forgot, sometimes, what a strange paradox her brother could be. How he could both be so prideful as a royal, and yet so lacking in self-confidence in everything else. Often acting as though he was selfish, when he was probably the most selfless person Tana knew.

She remembered what Gerik had told her about Teraz Plateau. About how her brother had been willing to sacrifice himself for near-strangers.

Tana swallowed. She bit her lip.

She leaned forward. The dress laid in her lap, forgotten, as she drew her brother into a hug. She made sure to squeeze _just_ hard enough to not hurt him, especially in his current condition.

"I love you," she murmured. "So, _so_ much."

After several seconds, his icy hands rested on her own back and clutched tight enough that his nails - raggard, much like her own - dug through her tunic.

"...I love you too," he whispered, voice hoarse.

"Stop putting yourself in unnecessary danger. _Please."_

There was a silence longer than the last. Tana felt a dampness against her shoulder, one rapidly blinked away.

"...I will try.”

Nodding against him, Tana forced her stinging eyes shut and continued to hug him.

**Author's Note:**

> "bond do you have a-" [yeah i have a twitter!!](https://twitter.com/greenpiggles) not too active atm because uni hell session!! but i am There lmao
> 
> hope you enjoyed! please consider leaving kudos and/or comments if you did, and have a fantastic day! <3


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